For a few weeks at the beginning of the 1966 season, after five-time all star and six-time defending Gold Glove winner Bill White had been traded to the Phillies but before the May trade with the Giants that brought future MVP Orlando Cepeda to St. Louis, George Kernek was the Cardinals’ starting first baseman. After a good 1965 season in AAA and a respectable showing in a September call-up, Kernek was awarded the job out of spring training in 1966 , with a Cardinal coach saying “He’s a better hitter than people give him credit for being. He has good power.”

Kernek started 15 of the Cardinals’ first 17 games in 1966, hitting .239/.314/.283, with a lone triple accompanying his 11 singles. He was benched on May 2, with veteran Tito Francona (father of Terry, future manager of the Red Sox, Phillies, and Indians) getting the final four starts at first before the May 8 trade for Cepeda, executed while the Giants were in town. Kernek was sent down to AAA Tulsa the same day, and never played in the major leagues again.

My slim connection to Kernek, born this day in 1940, is that his niece and I worked together in the late 1980s at the Daily Illini in Champaign. She learned I was a Cardinals fan, and she mentioned that her uncle played baseball, not just in the major leagues but with the Cardinals. I had never heard of George Kernek, so I looked him up in my Baseball Encyclopedia and lo and behold, there he was, George Kernek. According to the internet, Kernek got into the insurance business back home in Oklahoma, eventually opening his own firm, before retiring in 2009. His niece Lisa is a professor of journalism at Western Illinois University after a long run as a newspaper reporter.